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About Frank V. DuMond
The life of Frank Vincent DuMond spanned the Civil War to the Korean War. In his own time DuMond was often acknowledged as the most famous art instructor in the United States. Indeed, it was through his abilities as a teacher that he perhaps made his most important contributions to the world of art. By the end of his career he had served on the faculty of the *Art Students League of New York for nearly sixty years, as well as teaching in various summer programs. His year of instruction at the Art Students League (1884-85) under *J. Carroll Beckwith and William Sartain was followed by a period of study at the *Académie Julian under *Boulanger, *Lefebvre, and *Constant in Paris (1888-89). He exhibited in the Paris Salon between 1889 and 1898 — portraits, landscapes, and religious works. The latter have come to light in a recent exhibition of the *World’s Columbian Exposition (Revisiting the White City, 1993). His Monastic Life (Private collection) shows the application of *plein-air naturalism to a Salon type genre scene. When DuMond eventually returned to New York he began his career as an illustrator, first with the New York Daily Graphic and later with Century Magazine and Harper’s Weekly. This last position proved important in DuMond’s life, for it was his unauthorized sketch of New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden’s funeral in Yonkers that impressed then editor Horace Bradley. When the ASL subsequently chose Bradley as its new president, DuMond was taken on as instructor of painting.
Succeeding *Kenyon Cox as an instructor at the Art Students League in 1892, DuMond’s more liberal approach to painting made him a popular teacher: he would influence hundreds of students. Frequently, he provided his class with a theme, such as "harvest" or "north wind," and each student prepared a painted sketch on his understanding of the subject. The works were completed without the use of models or nature studies and were intended to focus the student on the emotional context of a theme. "The arrangement takes care of itself so long as the effort to suggest the true emotional value and truths of nature are followed" (DuMond, 1909, p. 176). Hence, chiaroscuro contrasts, regardless of color, the sense of movement and vitality derived from the sweep of a brush, the sense of strength achieved from the focus of light, and the simplicity of arrangement became primary considerations in the achievement of a fine picture. Careful reviews enlightened and encouraged DuMond’s students to produce more thoughtful renderings.
Technical achievement became a separate focus of study, created from careful observations of nature and live models. DuMond, however, was initially opposed to painting en *plein air, as many advocated. In using live models, notations were made on-the-spot; then one returned to the studio and applied them to a more finished work. This complex system was also advocated by *Birge Harrison, director of the Art Students League Woodstock School of Landscape Painting. As DuMond instructed students, he combined a working knowledge of both the impressionistic and the academic, encouraging his pupils to establish an individuality founded upon an understanding of fundamental academic principles:The student in making these compositions should have these things impressed upon him so that when he goes to nature his efforts shall not be with his paint and brush alone, but shall be in the direction of observing nature in these, her real, true moods. And conversely when he turns from nature to artistic expression, it is the knowledge of such things which are the all-important factors in his success. (DuMond, 1909, p. 179).
In addition to his teaching at the ASL, DuMond twice led groups of students to Crécy in France in the 1890s, where he had worked outdoors when he was an expatriate student, as early as 1889. He also chose to take his bride, Helen Xavier of Portland, Oregon, a student at the League, to the south of France for a wedding trip and lived in Paris with her for about the first five years of their marriage, summering in the south of the country near the Mediterranean.
After returning to the United States to teach at the Art Students League, DuMond also taught summer art courses at *Old Lyme, Connecticut. He lived with Miss *Florence Griswold, whose boarding house was the center of that art colony. After several years he bought an old farmhouse in Lyme, where he painted, taught private students, planted a garden, entertained, and raised his children. At this time, his work shifted from essentially tonalist landscapes to modified impressionism, working on small panels with an intensified palette. *Willard Metcalf’s influence may be responsible, as his important friendship with DuMond began as early as 1903, when the former came to Old Lyme.
In his landscapes, DuMond utilized a combination of impressionistic and more traditional techniques. His attention to atmosphere endowed his paintings with a mood immediately manifested in the viewer’s response. However, while there appears no clear outline, the artist’s academic training is evident in structure and form. What is impressionistic is the use of brush: small dashes of pigment intermingle with perpendicular sweeps across surface areas; the face of a rock, clearly rendered in horizontal sweeps, is juxtaposed with small dashes and vertical brushwork representative of grass and foliage. This freedom of brush and more liberal application of pigment are clearly indicative of a knowledge of an impressionistic mode of expression. While DuMond stepped beyond the confines of the academic, nevertheless, he never wholly abandoned its fundamental principles and it would be an error to identify him as an impressionist. Without mentioning the French impressionists directly, DuMond (1903, p. 12) declared, "the world’s greatest landscapes are not painted out-of-doors. . . [and] the instantaneous changes of nature’s moods do not give [one] the time to set up an easel or mix a tint." . His *subject matter varied from religious works to local scenes around Old Lyme to sporting pictures in Nova Scotia, where he spent August vacations.
DuMond’s artistic success – as a painter, muralist, and illustrator – is evidenced by the many awards he won. More significant was his leadership as a member of the International Jury of Awards for the *Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, as director of the department of fine arts at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon in 1905, and as a teacher. Awarded membership in the National Academy in 1906, DuMond was also a member of the *Society of American Artists, the *Lotos and *Salmagundi Clubs, the *Century Association, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He continued his long and productive career until his death in New York City in 1951.
REF.
Hitchcock, 1896, vol. 2, p. 177; DuMond, 1903; DuMond, 1909; Neuhaus, 1915-A, pp. 61-63; Neuhaus, 1915-B, pp. 81-
82; Landgren, 1940, pp. 101-102; Art Students League, 1951,
cat. no. 20; Art Students League, 1967, pp. 46-47; National Academy of Design, 1975, pp. 51, 54; Ferguson, 1976, cat. nos. 10-15; Connecticut and American Impressionism, 1980, pp.
157-158; Gerdts, 1984, pp. 223-224; Andersen, 1990; Gerdts, 1990, vol. 3, p. 194; Andersen, 1997; Love, 1999, pp. 88-89, 93-96, 185-191, 258, 260, 334-338, 800-801; Mellin, 2000. |
Paintings by Frank V. DuMond
| Golden Afternoon in Old Lyme |
| oil on canvas: 26 x 36 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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Click Picture to Enlarge
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